ABOUT THIS ALBUM

Album Notes

The Mont Alto Motion Picture Orchestra, a five-piece chamber ensemble, revives music composed and arranged for silent movie orchestras. This album features romantic themes from our recorded scores for The Blot, Children of Divorce, College, The Coward, Les Deux Timides, The Fall of Babylon, The Flying Ace, Mothers of Men, The Penalty, Ramona, The Silent Enemy, Timothy’s Quest, and People on Sunday.

“...the music was so terrific it could have stood ­separately as a concert. The film/music combo, well, was like hot fudge on a sundae.” — Leah Garchik, San Francisco Chronicle

Orchestral silent film scores were pieced together scene by scene from libraries of music maintained by each theater’s musical director. These collections contained plenty of works from the classical and salon music repertoire, but movies demand more than just overtures, intermezzos, and waltzes. As demand grew for music more suited to the kinds of scenes seen in typical films, many classically-trained composers considered this a new genre of classical music, and wrote numerous high-quality pieces specifically for silent film orchestras. They had no idea how soon their work would be plunged into oblivion by the coming of sound films.

The Mont Alto Orchestra’s mission is to explore and revive this lost repertoire for modern audiences.